


Luck

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Raina Doesn't Go through Terrigenesis, Season 02 AU, Trip Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29448522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: When it comes to Raina, Trip notices, there are many ways in which it all comes down to luck.
Relationships: Raina (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)/Antoine Triplett
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	Luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LilacFeather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacFeather/gifts).



> And we had made it to the last of Valentine's gifts! Thank you for being around for this!
> 
> Written for the prompt: “Lucky me”.

It takes Raina four days to talk again, which, considering what Trip has seen of her so far, should be a little concerning, but they have had more pressing matters to worry about than that.

“I want to know what happened to Skye.” It’s a demand, not a question, made when he brings her dinner on the evening of the fourth day. Trip stops on his tracks, clearly taken by surprise by her voice.

“Bad things,” he replies, as neutrally as he can, and he sees the way her face contorts in anger. It is good to see her showing emotion, it reminds him that she is a human being and not a machine of manipulation with an agenda. “We are lucky we got out of there in time.”

Trip will forever feel guilty about not stopping Skye from going back inside the temple, but she insisted on getting the Diviner back before the temple crumbled down, and Trip could not keep both of them contained, could barely keep Raina outside with only a good arm and the exhaustion of days and months piling upon him. Now Skye is quarantined and devastated, and the base has been trembling at random.

Raina turns around to look at the wall of her cell and doesn’t touch the food.

* * *

They let her out, eventually. She worked with Garrett and with Hydra and she exposed Simmons, but in the big scheme of things, almost none of them got their hands completely clean, they are perpetually understaffed and even if fueled by fairytales, Raina knows more about what Skye is going through than all of them combined.

Trip believes they are lucky she is around, all things considered. She is a snake, but in the best possible way. She would have reigned terror at the Ops Academy. She made a lot of bad choices along the road, but she had also been dealt a bad hand, Trip has heard. Maybe this is the break she deserved from the beginning. 

Besides, she and Skye got a weird love-hate dynamic faintly resembling that of siblings, and it’s an absolute delight to witness it.

* * *

Ever since she got out of confinement, Trip has never seen her wearing anything but a deep blue dress patterned with white flowers. He knows the Playground’s stock of clothes is not top of the line in terms of fashion, but using and reusing the same dress again and again feels a little excessive.

He runs into her in the communal washing room one night, and he almost doesn’t recognize her in nondescript black clothes. She is hand washing the dress at the sink with a care that explains why the dress hasn’t already frayed apart at the seams.

“Agent Triplett,” she says in her usual saccharine tone.

“You can call me Trip”. She nods once, and one look is enough to know that she has not forgotten him yet for stealing her chance at the Temple. “Is that what you were wearing when you joined us?” It’s an obvious attempt at striking a conversation, but he can do with obvious: she has been around long enough for him to feel weird that she still refuses to talk to him whenever possible.

“It is.”

“Why not flowers?”

She pauses her careful scrubbing, and Trip almost expects her to leave with her dress still seeping and everything.

“The man that was… sponsoring me at the moment preferred me looking younger.”

“Ah.” He does not mention that he thought her better than to bend to the wishes of men. It would be unfair to them both: survival is survival, and living to fight another day is usually the smartest choice. “His loss, then.”

“Pardon?”

Trip shrugs, and he wishes he could say it is all natural and carefree, but he can’t be anything but perfectly calculated with her intense eyes focused on him.

“If he didn’t realize how lucky he was with the full package, he was a damn fool.”

She goes back to her washing without another word, but the next morning she sits down next to him during breakfast. On his next turn on the supplies run, Trip makes sure to get a couple of dresses with flowers on her size out of his own pocket.

* * *

He catches her reading _The Odyssey_ once.

“I never pegged you for the Greek lit type.”

She puts the book down very carefully, the same way she moves through life, and looks at him with her palms crossed on her lap. He knows her enough by now to recognize the different gleams in her eyes, and this one means she is more amused than annoyed.

“I am not a box, Agent Triplett. There are more than four sides of me.”

“And now you are quoting Glee at me. You really are something, Raina.”

“Happy to be of service.”

Trip sits down- not next to her, not yet- and takes his own book from the coffee table. 

“Are you enjoying it?”

“I don’t read it for enjoyment. I read it to remember.”

It makes sense, in a way, that she would choose a book about a man with a bad star that gets out on the other side of life counting on his wits. They both go back to their reading. 

* * *

“They told me you requested me specifically to train you.”

“I did.”

She is wearing the black clothes he has only seen on her once before, and for some reason it makes his stomach unsettled. They will need to get her clothes more appropriate for physical exercise. He has been on supervising duties for green agents before, but not for someone who needs to start from scratch. He wonders if he is up to the task.

“Why?”

He is expecting her to reply with an evasive or to not reply at all, and that’s why he feels struck by lightning when she looks him straight in the eyes and says, “Because I will be lucky to be trained by you, Trip.”

He knows that is the way she gets inside people’s minds and that habits die hard, but she says his name like it’s a curl of pure sugar that falls from her mouth in spirals, and he turns around and pretends to grab the mats to not show her how affected he is by it.

* * *

“You have been getting good.”

“You have been driving me to the bones.” She closes her eyes and tries to catch her breath, laying on the mat. Trip refrains an intense urge to sweep a drop of sweat that runs down her cheek with his thumb. “Do you think I will be ready soon?”

By ‘ready’ she means if she will be allowed outside, which is something that so far has been strictly forbidden. She has jumped through all the loops Coulson has placed in front of her, and Trip decides he will do everything in his power to make it happen, even if it’s only taking her out with him on a mock-mission. She needs fresh air and sunshine, and either she will behave like a proper agent or she will bail, and they have waited long enough: Coulson needs to know, and Trip himself needs to know, and Raina herself needs to know. 

“With any luck, there will be something for us soon.”

* * *

She is bleeding and Trip feels like he is the one about to pass out. 

Her wound is quite superficial: the bullet barely scraped her arm, but she shouldn’t have been close to any bullets at all.

“I told you to wait in the car,” he whispers while he bandages her up. His words might be blunt, but his voice betrays how he really feels: both terrified and humbled that she jumped in front of danger to push him away from it. 

“You know I don’t follow orders well,” she replies, her eyes fluttering closed.

It is a comment meant to stir him, to take him out of the worry zone, but Trip can not be swayed by something like that. Not now. Not with her. 

He cups the back of her head with his hand, and Raina opens her eyes in surprise. Her breath hitches when he presses his forehead against hers, and this is the first time he has been able to faze her. 

“I am lucky to have you on my side,” he says and means _Please stay._

“Yes. Yes, you are,” she whispers back and means _I will._

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Prompts
>   * Image reactions
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> This author replies to comments (but it might take a while). If you'd rather not get a reply, please add *whispers* to your comment.



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